Another two steps, and Tenel Ka could now just see the top of Allana’s head. Her daughter was in Jacen’s lap, webbing holding her to her father. Her head was forward as though she were asleep or preparing for a crash landing.
Tenel Ka felt a little flicker in the Force—from behind her, not from Jacen’s direction. She stopped and spun, igniting her lightsaber.
There was no attack coming from that direction, but the diplomatic shuttle was now flush against the hangar’s stone wall. And Tenel Ka’s sense of dread, of anticipated attack, grew.
“Get back!” Her words could not possibly carry to the security officers surrounding the shuttle, but she poured her anxiety and intent into the Force, broadcasting her command on an emotional level. “Get behind cover!”
Suiting action to words, she leapt behind one of the natural stone columns lining the hangar bay and put her back to it. She turned her head to glance toward Jacen.
He looked straight at her, offering a tight little smile, then held up a comlink. He pressed the button on it.
The universe went white and the column kicked against Tenel Ka’s back…
Tenel Ka heard her daughter calling for her. But the Hapan queen stood in red mud up to her knees, with Allana nowhere in sight. Broken columns tilted at odd angles, and severed arms and legs the size of public transportation speeders protruded from the mud—as far as the horizon, in every direction.
“Mommy—”
Tenel Ka opened her eyes and sat up, looking around wildly for her child.
Her head hurt and her ears rang like someone playing a tympani on a gong. She recognized her surroundings, one of the numberless waiting rooms up at the royal residence level. This one, decorated in subtle variations of purples and off-whites, was adjacent to Allana’s playroom. She must have been dreaming.
Tenel Ka sat on a morphing divan that had been adjusted to daybed dimensions. Isolder rose from where he’d been sitting on a chair opposite her. “Lie down. You’re hurt.” His words were dim, hard to hear over the ringing in her ears.
Instead, she stood, wobbling in sudden, passing dizziness. “Where’s Allana?”
“Jacen Solo has her.” Isolder’s face was pale, as ashen as it had been the day his wife had died. “The shuttle blast, a shaped charge, was sufficient to blow a hole in the hangar’s exterior wall large enough for his starfighter. He made orbit in his X-wing and escaped.”
The coldness in Tenel Ka’s gut spread to envelop her entire body. Her legs shook. Her father put his hands on her shoulders, steadying her. “Please, sit. We have battle cruisers and Battle Dragons strung along the routes between here and Coruscant. But it’s likely that he will have picked an escape route we can’t predict.”
She let Isolder guide her back down to the divan’s surface. “How long—”
“Two hours ago. The diplomatic party has been detained and is being interrogated.” Isolder’s voice was grim. “The shock they’re expressing…I can only guess at this point, but I think it’s genuine. It looks like they thought they were on an actual mission of negotiation, and that Solo used them only as a diversion.”
“Has he communicated—has he sent terms for her return?”
Isolder’s expression became even more sour. “He left a message. A datachip handed to me by the little girl who acted as Allana’s double. I’ll play it for you.” He rose and moved to a table to activate the monitor upon it.
“Who is the girl?”
“A Coruscanti orphan named Tika. Solo promised that if she would do this one thing for him, he’d take her to a world where there were thousands of beautiful women, one of whom would become her new mommy.”
Tenel Ka clapped her hand over her mouth. It was just one more horror, and the least of the ones she had endured in just a few waking minutes, but it somehow pointed more starkly to Jacen’s inhumanity than all the murders he had perpetrated to seize Allana.
Isolder stepped away from the monitor. Jacen Solo popped up on the display, somber, dressed in his Galactic Alliance Guard colonel’s uniform.
“Greetings to the esteemed Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium.” His voice did not exactly drip with sarcasm, but the excessive formality he employed, treating Tenel Ka as some distant ruler, ignoring all that they had been to each other, was just as hurtful. “At Kuat, you put me into an untenable situation. Being abandoned to my enemies, abandoned by one for whom I once had considerable affection and respect, was like being murdered…and surviving.
“So I’m going to repay the favor. You have a choice to make, like the one you tried to force upon me. You will put all Hapan military forces under my command, with ships’ senior officers to be supplied by the Galactic Alliance…or your daughter will die.”
Jacen leaned forward so that his face more completely filled the monitor screen. His eyes were bright, inhuman in their intensity and focus. They even seemed lighter in color than usual. “By doing what you did to me, you changed me into someone capable of doing exactly what I have promised. This threat is not a bluff, and if it takes place, it will be your doing. Something to keep in mind the next time you play the Hapan cultural game of backstabbing and bloodletting.”
The screen went dark.
Tenel Ka let out the breath she realized she’d been holding since Jacen first appeared on screen. Isolder said nothing.
Finally, she turned to him. She struggled to keep her voice even, but it wasn’t easy; her breath wanted to come in pained gasps. “Prince Isolder. In your opinion, is he capable of carrying out his threat?”
“I don’t know him nearly as well as you, Queen Mother. But…yes.” He glanced at the monitor. “I’ve watched the recording a dozen times, and each time I see a man whose humanity has been utterly extracted from him.”
Tears came to Tenel Ka’s eyes. “He was right, you know. It’s like being murdered and surviving.”
chapter seven
KASHYYYK, MAITELL BASE, HANGAR HOUSING THE MILLENNIUM FALCON
Waroo set the oversized metal case down on the sabacc table. The Wookiee offered a mild growl of a question.
Han looked down at the case. It looked like the sort wealthy travelers used to transport delicate, expensive clothing. Outfitted with foam inserts, a case like this was also ideal for transporting weapons, and this one was large enough to hold several blaster rifles with folding stocks or a couple of squadrons’ worth of blaster pistols.
Han, opposite the Wookiee, shook his head. “You got me, pal. You sure it’s for me?”
Waroo nodded.
Leia looked closely at the case. “I don’t feel any sense of menace from it. Did you do a routine scan?”
Waroo grunted an affirmative.
“Clean, huh. But no indication who sent it.” Han gave the top seam locks another look. In the shadow cast by the case itself, the broad locking tabs glowed slightly. “That’s not too comforting.”
“It’s a scanner.” Jag, leading Jaina and Zekk, was walking in from deeper in the hangar, where their X-wings had their bays. Just back from a routine patrol, he had reported that the firebreak lines carved by Lillibanca with the help of the Solos and other pilots, including Lando Calrissian, were holding. “They read thumbprints.”
“Huh.” Experimentally, Han placed his thumbs over the tabs, but did not touch them. He glanced at Leia. “I assume you’ll give me a push if this starts to blow up.”
She affected disinterest. “Probably.”
“Yeah.” He placed his thumbs on the tabs.
They beeped, shrill little noises, then gave way under the pressure of his thumbs. He pressed harder and they clicked into place. Gingerly, Han lifted the case’s lid.
The case did indeed have foam inserts, but it did not hold firearms. In the bottom was the front piece of a breastplate, shaped in a stylized representation of a male human chest, well muscled. In the top of the case were two metal gauntlets, nearly elbow-length. All three items were made of a dull metal, something like brushed silver or burnished iron.
A piece of flimsi was tucked into the gap between one gauntlet and the foam insert that held it. Han pulled it free, unfolded it, and read aloud the words hand-printed on it: “With deepest sympathy.”
Leia frowned. “Sympathy for what?”
A weight settled on Han’s chest. He tried to ignore it. “These are crushgaunts. A Mandalorian weapon. Illegal for generations, plus very hard to make anyway, on account of the Mandalorian veins of beskar mostly ran out. That’s what they’re made of.”
Jag shook his head, not recognizing the term. “Beskar?”
“Mandalorian iron. Tough, tough metal. Legend says armor made from the stuff can take a lightsaber hit and survive. Mechanisms in the gauntlet hands allow them to crush whatever they grip. Necks, heads, blaster rifles, just about anything. I saw a pair once, years ago. Another smuggler showed ’em off before delivering them to Jabba the Hutt.”
Jaina looked puzzled. “Is this that pair?”
“No, sweetie. These are new. Unscarred.”
The answer did not clear up Jaina’s confusion. “So the armor is a Mandalorian breastplate?”
Han nodded. “Yeah. The back plate is probably under it.” He lifted the front plate, revealing a matching piece of armor, its surface contoured more like a human back, lying there. The front plate was not heavy—it felt more like aluminum than iron. “Uh-huh.”
Jaina shook her head. “I still don’t get it.”
“It’s a present, Jaina. From Boba Fett.”
Han heard Leia’s intake of breath. He sat heavily in his usual chair. Not wanting to worsen Leia’s pain or his own, but unable just to ignore Jaina’s continued curiosity, he held up the piece of flimsi. “Get it? Sympathy for my loss of a son. Something he understands, since he lost a daughter. A daughter tortured to death by my son. He’s saying, So sad you lost your kid. Here’s a little toy you can finish him off with.”
Jaina’s face became impassive. “Oh. Are you going to use it?”
“No.”
“So he’s wasted a lot of money for nothing.”
Han nodded. “A lot of money. Even if the Mandalorians are mining beskar again, this is a lot of credits and effort for a snide joke.” He looked at the case’s contents again. “Except it’s only half a joke. He’d like to help whoever it is kills the killer of his daughter. He’d probably like to do something for whoever takes Colonel Solo out of the equation. He may even feel real sympathy.” He reached over to slam the case lid down. “His message is as complicated, as much of a mess, as Fett himself.”
Jaina, clearly uninterested, shrugged and turned away. “Time for a sanisteam.” She tugged at Zekk’s sleeve. “Then more training.”
He followed, protesting: “How about training first, then the sanisteam? That way we don’t have a pointless sanisteam in the middle.”
Jag remained behind, eyeing the case. “Han, at the risk of sounding insensitive…”
Han snorted. “If you think it’s insensitive, whatever it is will probably take the paint off a Hutt’s refresher.”
Jag gave him a brief, apologetic smile. “You’re really not going to use this gear?”
Han shook his head.
“Armor that stops a lightsaber, with Alema Rar our target…”
“You think it would be useful to you.”
“Not as useful as something you said the other day, but yes. Very much so.”
Han frowned, puzzled. “What did I say?”
“Something about Alema’s tactics.” But Jag did not elaborate.
“All right, kid. Take it, it’s yours.”
Leia broke in on Han’s words: “On one condition.”
Jag stopped in the act of picking up the case. “Of course. Name it.”
“Tell me what’s wrong with my daughter.”
Jag hefted the case experimentally. It was apparently nowhere near as heavy as he had expected. “She is entirely focused on our target. Alema Rar.”
“I know that. But even facing a dangerous enemy shouldn’t make her so cold, impassive.”
“Emotionless.” Jag looked after the departing Jaina and Zekk. They were walking toward a tree-shaded glade they often used as a sparring site. “Well, it’s the whole Sword of the Jedi thing. She thinks she’s figured out what it is to be the Sword of the Jedi. Going after Alema Rar is just practice for her. She thinks she’s going to have to face her brother. And that one of them’s not going to come out of it alive.”
Han sighed. He reached up to take his wife’s hand. Leia’s fingers gripped his hard. “Sure, kid. A lot of people are looking forward to a showdown with Colonel Solo.”
“Jaina…” Jag hesitated, struggling for the words. “She thinks that any distraction now could be fatal to her then. That means enjoyment of any sort. Anything that would make her smile is the enemy. The thing is, she’s really a lot like her brother, before his change, and I don’t want her to cast off her humanity the way he has.” He offered Leia a brief smile of apology for those words. “I’m trying to find a way to tell her that if you sharpen a sword all the time, even when it’s not dull, by the time you need it there’s no metal left. It will break. But she’s not listening.”
Leia’s voice was low, concerned. “Have you used those exact words?”
“She doesn’t learn from words, Jedi Solo. She only learns from success. And failure.” Jag gave her a sympathetic look and walked out into the sunlight, metal case in hand.
chapter eight
CORUSCANT, GALACTIC ALLIANCE GUARD BUILDING
Allana opened her eyes. In front of her was the corner of the bed she was lying on—a plain bed, its mattress very soft and comfortable but old-fashioned, not adjusting its shape to her as she moved. Beyond it was a bare brown wall, its simulated wood pattern hard to make out in the dim light of half-shadowed glow rods.
She didn’t know this place.
She rolled over to see the whole room, and there he was—seated in a chair by the bed, tall and handsome, wearing his black uniform, his eyes so bright and intent they almost frightened her.
But she shouldn’t be frightened of him. He was her mother’s friend.
She held out her arms. “Jacen.”
His face twitched a little when she called his name, but he came to her and held her. “Allana. You slept a long time.”
“Where am I?” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder.
He drew back to look at her again, and now his eyes were normal. “You’re on Coruscant.”
“Where’s Mommy?”
“She’s back on Hapes.”
Allana fidgeted, and, reluctance on his face, Jacen released her. “Why is she there and not here?”
“You don’t remember?”
She shook her head.
“Bad people came to your palace. They wanted to hurt you and your mother.”
“Like before.”
Jacen nodded. “They used coma gas, which puts people to sleep. Since you’re little, it put you to sleep for a long time. I had just arrived there for a visit. Your mother thought you’d be safer if you came home with me. That way, the bad people won’t know where you are.”
“Oh.” That made sense, but her mother had said that anyone Allana was going to be sent away with like that, even if there wasn’t time for a good-bye, would know the special words. And Jacen hadn’t said the special words yet. “Can I talk to Mommy on the holocomm?”
Jacen shook his head. “Not yet. The bad people could trace the transmission. Do you know what that means?”
Allana nodded. “Like following a trail of bread crumbs.”
“Exactly. That would lead them right here, which would undo all the good your mommy and I have done. So we’ll just have to stay hidden for a while. But I’m arranging to have all sorts of things brought here for you to play with. Toys and gadgets and musical instruments.”
“And friends?”
“Not yet. Soon, I hope. I’ll have a droid friend for you tomorrow.” He gave her another hug. “I’ve go
t to go, but I’ll be watching through that holocam.” He pointed straight up, but Allana could see nothing on the ceiling there. “So you’ll always be safe. Just call for me if you need anything.”
“All right.” She watched him leave, then lay down again.
And she wondered how long it would be before Jacen remembered the special words, and what she should do if he never said them.
CORUSCANT, BENEATH THE GALACTIC ALLIANCE GOVERNMENT DISTRICT
There were five of them, Jedi all, ranging in experience from a teenage girl to a graying veteran who had first seen action as a stormtrooper serving Palpatine’s Empire.
Valin Horn, son of Corran, breathed a sigh of relief that he was not at the low end of the age ranking. In his late twenties, he was, by a statistical accident that seemed to plague him, often paired with much older Jedi. Here Master Kyle Katarn was indeed his senior, by some forty-odd years. But the Falleen male, Thann Mithric, and the Bothan female, Kolir Hu’lya, were both his junior by several months. And the human girl leading them, Seha, was youngest of all.
Not that seniority mattered much on a mission like this. Valin was just pleased that he was getting old enough not to be at the bottom of every age sorting.
All five Jedi wore matte-black garments that covered them from neck to toes. The material, slick against abrasive surfaces like duracrete and metal drainage pipes, retained heat in cold surroundings like water but radiated it in warmer environments. The Jedi carried—and sometimes, as now, dragged or pushed—packs containing their lightsabers, robes that could be folded into very compact bundles, other weapons, and climbing equipment.
None of which was likely to help them at the moment, as they wriggled their way like worms along a damp, constricting waste-fluids pipe. Seha had said that it hadn’t served its intended purpose in all the time she had been alive. But cracks all over the ancient city infrastructure allowed water from other pipelines to leak in, some of it foul smelling. And Seha had told them that during a fierce rain, pipes like this could be flooded and washed clean.
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury Page 6
